This book examine the role of the Oedipus complex in the psyche and relate it to urgent issues of social and cultural life, historical and current."Freud and Female Sexuality" (1975), the first paper included in the present collection, resulted from the debate which followed on the publication of Female Sexuality. The subsequent articles, written after 1983 and, for the most part, unpublished at the time when the author was invited to prepare this volume, cover a wide range of subjects, but are linked to each other and to the opening paper by an underlying theme: The role of the Father and the Mother in the Psyche.